Solid-phase chemical peptide synthesis methods have been known in the art since the early 1960's (Merrifield, R. B., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 85, 2149-2154 (1963) (See also Stewart, J. M. and Young, J. D., Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis, 2 ed., Pierce Chemical Co., Rockford, Ill., pp. 11-12)) and have recently been employed in commercially available laboratory peptide design and synthesis kits (Cambridge Research Biochemicals). Such commercially available laboratory kits have generally utilized the teachings of H. M. Geysen et al, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA, 81, 3998 (1984) and provide for synthesizing peptides upon the tips of a multitude of "rods" or "pins" all of which are connected to a single plate. When such a system is utilized, a plate of rods or pins is inverted and inserted into a second plate of corresponding wells or reservoirs, which contain solutions for attaching or anchoring an appropriate amino acid to the pin's or rod's tips. By repeating such a process step, i.e., inverting and inserting the rod's and pin's tips into appropriate solutions, amino acids are built into desired peptides.
While the above rod or pin system can be extremely efficient in preparing peptides (Geysen, H. M. et al, J. Immunol. Methods, 102, 259-274 (1987)) it cannot be easily automated, since the plate which holds the rods or pins must be repeatedly inverted and inserted into wells or reservoirs of desired solutions. The automation of such a process step (inversion and insertion) would not only be considered difficult, but is also so specialized as to preclude the use of general laboratory equipment, to perform such a step. It is for such reasons that the prior art method of peptide synthesis on rod or pin tips is performed manually. Manual peptide synthesis, of course, requires that lab personnel be present throughout peptide synthesis, and as such, the prior art teachings of protein synthesis utilizing rod or pin technology burdens laboratories by requiring that personnel be present when peptide synthesis is to be performed.